“Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM), the troubled maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, is in talks to hire a financial adviser that can help it weigh strategic options, according to three people with knowledge of the matter,” Serena Saitto reports for Bloomberg.

“RIM is considering hiring one Canadian bank and one global bank, said one of the people, who asked to remain anonymous because the deliberations are private,” Saitto reports. “Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM last month said it is weighing strategic changes, including licensing the BlackBerry operating system, after its struggle to vie with Apple Inc.’s iPhone and devices that use Android software led to five straight quarters of revenue shortfalls.”

MacDailyNews Take: License this OS and you too can shed market share at rates that cause you to hire banks to “weigh strategy options.”

Saitto reports, “RIM Chief Executive Officer Thorsten Heins said at the time that while the company would consider a sale, that wasn’t ‘the main direction’ he’s pursuing… The company’s willingness to seek help from external advisers suggests a new openness to a takeover or a strategic investment from a management team that had before now spurned bankers’ pitches, the people said. RIM has declined 75 percent in the past 12 months amid market share losses to Apple and smartphone makers that rely on Google Inc.’s Android software.”

The number of very large publicly traded Companies that have failed since 2000 is mind boggling. I’ve counted over 50 without doing any research. An MBA isn’t as important as people think it is. Common sense accounts for a great deal.